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The Two Covenants

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 22, 1883

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 9, No. 12.

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The Two Covenants.

(Continued).
THE law of the Lord is perfect. Ps. 19:7-11; 111:7, 8; 119:96; James 1:25; 2:8-12. It is God's great rule of right by which sin is shown. 1 John 3:4, 5; Rom. 3:19, 20; 7:12, 13. But the first covenant is declared by Paul not to have been faultless. Heb. 8:7. This is another palpable proof of a distinction between the moral law and the covenant which God entered into with Israel respecting it. Nor is this to be met by the statement that Paul pronounces the law itself to be faulty, and therefore the law and the covenant may be identical. For the law thus designated by Paul was not the ten commandments, but the Levitical law. And here are a few points out of many in proof of this assertion:—
1. This law was received under the Levitical priesthood. Heb. 7:11. But the ten commandments were received before that priesthood had been appointed. Compare Ex. 20 with Ex. 28.
2. This was a law relating to priesthood, tithes, and offerings. Heb. 7:5, 12, 28. But the ten commandments said nothing concerning this.
3. It was a law which required that the priesthood should be of the tribe of Levi, and which had to be changed in order to have a priest arise out of the tribe of Judah. Heb. 7:12-14. But the ten commandments had no precept that related to the subject, or that needed to be changed for that reason.
Finally, with one further proof of the distinction between the moral law and the first covenant, this point of the argument shall be closed. The first covenant having waxed old and vanished away, the new covenant is made by God in its place. Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-13. And now observe the grand promise of the new covenant: "But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel: After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Jer. 31:23. It is therefore certain that the dissolution of the first covenant is not the abrogation of the law of God. That which was the law of God in the days of Jeremiah, six hundred years before Christ, is the subject of this prediction. This law was not only to survive the dissolution of the first covenant, but it was to continue to exist under the new covenant, and to sustain even a more